Telstra boss in Wikipedia row

By Tom Arup

12 June 2008 — 1:36pm

A US law firm has reportedly threatened Wikimedia with legal action unless it removes "defamatory statements" from the Wikipedia entry of Telstra boss Sol Trujillo.

The letter appears on the website, Chilling Effects, a joint project between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several US law schools including Harvard and Berkeley, which tracks online media law issues.

In the March 7 letter, New York law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft requests the language "permanently be removed" and that an anonymous user who had been repeatedly changing Mr Trujillo's entry be blocked from editing the page.

The letter said if Wikimedia did not comply with the requests by 7pm on March 7 then legal action would commence against the company on March 10.

Sol Trujillo's Wikipedia entry is now a stripped-down entry with only a short piece under the subheading "Career". The entry on March 6 had two extra subheadings, "CEO of Telstra" and "Controversies".

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The "defamatory language" appears to refer to comments made about Mr Trujillo's business career in the US as CEO of U S West, an American telecommunications company, and his standing in the business community.

The anonymous user appears to have changed Mr Trujillo's entry with a 3G mobile phone based in Australia, a service now being widely promoted by Telstra.

Mr Trujillo was appointed CEO of Telstra in July 2005. He has since had a strained relationship with the Federal Government and competitors about Telstra's role in the telecommunication industry in Australia.

Comment is being sought from Telstra.

A spokesperson for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft said the office could not comment until the morning (New York time). There was no one available at the San Francisco Wikimedia head office for comment.